Cape Town - HIV-positive and tuberculosis patients who default on treatment could be increasing the spread of the two diseases.
The latest research shows that many of these patients and their contacts were often untraceable – and possibly infectious.
The study was carried out by Wits University’s Clinical HIV Research Unit and the University of North Carolina in the US.
It found that such patients changed their addresses often, with the result that it was difficult to trace them.
Also, a large number of those who were found did not continue taking their medicine.
This meant they got sicker and put their families and friends at high risk of infection.
Of almost 2 000 people in the TB/HIV tracing programme in Gauteng, more than 35 percent could not be traced because their households had moved or no one was at home during working hours.
Those in the tracing programme included treatment defaulters, those who failed to return for CD4 count results, and those eligible for antiretrovirals who did not come forward.
Among 1 200 cases where tracing was attempted, researchers found hundreds of contacts of the original patient who had fallen ill: more than 172 new TB diagnoses, and almost 400 new HIV diagnoses.
Only 35 percent, or 419 out of 1 200, households were successfully traced, while almost 800 cases, or 31 percent, could not be located.
In almost 20 percent of households, defaulters or their contacts could not be traced because people had moved, while 27.4 percent were reported to have gone to work.
Of the 630 patients lost to care, only 21 percent were traced.
Tracing households with newly diagnosed TB or HIV patients was more successful, with 39 percent traceable, compared with those lost to care, where only 31.6 percent of patients were traced.
Lead researcher Annelies van Rie of the University of North Carolina said that the research highlighted challenges with community contact investigation for TB and HIV tracing. With the competition for resources, people had to find better ways of tracing people, so that poor countries with many ill people could integrate them into their public health programmes. - Cape Argus